


forest’s favourite

by pathworn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, just adam and ronan being in love, this is very soft and has little to no plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23216614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathworn/pseuds/pathworn
Summary: Things created from Ronan’s subconscious tend to have a proclivity for Adam Parrish. Ronan wonders why that is.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 19
Kudos: 214





	forest’s favourite

**Author's Note:**

> this has no spoilers for call down the hawk except maybe abt contact names stored in Ronan's phone.

♧

Ronan decides to walk because it's always helped clear his head. Even if the act doesn't actually wipe his mind off all that's unwanted, it makes room for other stuff. Stuff that's distracting. 

Gansey never has to clear his head because nothing in there is unwanted. Even the knowledge of his own fucked up death isn't unwanted. It's a quest that has to be attained and explained. 

Adam… well Adam most certainly has reasons to clear his head and Ronan's not proud of it, but he's observed Adam's coping mechanism for mind clearing in person. Multiple times. Because when you work as hard as Adam, as much as Adam. When you're stubborn as hell like Adam, it's bound to wear you off. Adam sleeps to clear his head. Of course he does. Count on Adam Parrish to remain productive even when he's struggling with complications in his mind. Sleeping is productive because without it, there's no production.

And if Ronan marvels at the quiet in Adam's face, at the slump in his otherwise taut features, and at slope of his nose, the shape of his closed eyes, no one has to know.

Ronan walks because Ronan can't sleep. Not right now. Not when his head feels like a lawless land and he's afraid of losing control. Not now.

His watch, a dreamt thing, tells him it's 3:37. It tells him  _ Adam's still here  _ when he finds himself in front of the Ninos'. He takes the farthest table from Adam's service territory upon walking in.

He orders an Americano. Still afraid of sleeping.

He doesn't see Adam at first but then he walks from behind the counter, his faded coca cola T-shirt stained by a few brown spots. 

Adam ambles over to tables, an amicable smile plastered on his face. He ambles back from tables, shoulders caving inward and eyes looking hollowed out in the absence of the smile. Not that the smile is ever genuine, but the shape of his stretched mouth softens every sharp angle in his face. Softens the lump of cardiac muscle in Ronan's chest.

He's staring so intently at Adam that he doesn't remember to stop when Adam starts walking toward where he's sitting. Doesn't remember to remember Adam's not supposed to walk toward where he's sitting.

"Americano?" He says, raising his eyebrows at Ronan. 

"Tired." Ronan replies. At least he remembers to look away now.  _ Knows  _ to look away now.

Adam looks at him, sighs loudly and says, "You know you can feel it when a person is staring at you." 

"What are you trying to say Parrish." 

"Nothing. My shift is over, you wanna walk back?"  _ With me? To my apartment? Listen to me breathe? Because you're a creep who is always staring at me.  _ Ronan stops filling in Adam's not quite complete suggestion.

The sun is still blinking across the expanse of the sky. It's strange to think it's going to set soon. But maybe the sun is allowed to get wacky in winters. Maybe it is allowed to get wacky all the time considering how it is the ultimate source of life on the planet. Considering how the absence of a giant gas ball on fire, would mean the absence of life on this considerably less giant ball of floating rock. Everyone’s allowed to get wacky.

Ronan wasn't put off by Adam mentioning the staring. He's aware he does it inordinately, aware that Adam's aware of it. It's just that he finds himself a little unaware of it while in the act of it.

Walking side by side, Ronan tries not to focus on the sounds of Adam's breathing. 

It's colder outside and Adam has switched his faded coca cola T-shirt for a faded mustard sweater. The material of it looks soft, even if the threads of it are visibly pulled out and damaged at places. Ronan tries not to focus on how it falls past his shoulders just so, visibly exposing the jut of his collarbones.

Declan's always telling him that he doesn't even try. If only Declan knew.

"You want to talk?" Adam says, pulling his sleeves over his hands as far as they will readily go. It isn't much; Adam has gracefully long fingers. So slender, Ronan has to remind himself that it's alright to wax poetics about absurd things.

It makes him realize that when people write poetry about a water droplet or even more preposterous concepts like about worn out threads, stained T-shirts, hollowed out eyes, it's justified. Because beauty can be seen anywhere, it only takes the eye. Beauty can't be unseen anywhere once seen because it only takes the mind a momentary appreciation of all that is and isn't to form a permanent idea.

Ronan looks at Adam as if to say  _ about what? _

Adam catches on to the look because that's just how Ronan prefers to talk. Without talking.

"About why you're tired." He adds, looking down at the concrete and how his shoes slap noiselessly 

against it.

Adam walks like a ghost. (Like a dream.)

"You don't understand the concept of it. I can't explain it to you." Ronan says, looking at his watch. A dreamt thing that tells him it's 3:38. It tells him  _ time is not real when you're with Adam.  _ Ronan hates dream logic. 

"I get tired. I just manage to work around it." 

"Yeah, I can't explain it to you." 

They are silent for a while before Adam speaks again. "I found a new bottle of detergent that said  _ forest's favourite.  _ I figured either you or Gansey bought it as a joke but it smelt really good so I used it instead of throwing it away, and then my clothes came out all new and un-torn."

"Strange." Ronan comments for the sake of it.

Adam rolls his eyes. For the sake of it.

"Ronan." It's not  _ Lynch _ . It's Ronan. Meaning that Adam's exasperated but all Ronan can focus on is how Adam says his name. Even when he's dejected the shape of his name, the consonants and vowels sound so pretty in Adam's voice. Ronan has never loved his name more.

"Parrish." Ronan says, because it's always that.

Adam turns to look at him and his gaze is so heavy. Ronan wonders if this is what Adam meant by being able to  _ feel  _ someone stare at you.

"I pulled it out of my dream and had no use of it. Your apartment still doesn't have a lot of things it should have and so it made sense to place it in your bathroom." Ronan begs God for Adam to not ask him what he was doing in his bathroom. Adam doesn't know but Ronan sneaks in…. quite often. Replace sneaking in by dropping by and it doesn't sound half as creepy. Doesn't sound creepy at all. They are friends and aren't really your regular teenage boys. They have unconventional abilities and lives and so replace dropping by with sneaking in and it shouldn't really make that big of a difference.

  
  


Mercifully, Adam doesn't ask.

"Lynch, it said Forest's Favourite." Adam says instead, like that's the pressing detail here. Maybe it is.

"You are." 

"Oh?" Adam says like it's some giant revelation. His mouth rounded, lashes fluttering dramatically, Ronan's suddenly keenly aware that the giant sphere of rock he stands on is actually suspended into nothingness.

Ronan raises his eyebrows again as if to say,  _ what's the big deal _ and Adam catches on because that's just how Ronan talks. Without talking.

"I thought it meant the smell. Like the fragrance of the detergent was the forest's favourite." 

"Oh." Ronan says like it's some giant revelation. For someone so smart, Adam sure is an oblivious fool at times. But then again, he isn't. Cunning, clever boy is the most observant thing Ronan's ever known and that's why Ronan doesn't pursue his interests.

"I don't see why you need to complain about it." Ronan tries to shift the topic from the glaringly obvious turn it is taking.

"You didn't dream it accidently." Is all Adam says.

"Still don't see a reason to complain." 

Adam doesn't press further but sighs in defeat and maybe Ronan should take this as a sign. Because if it were Gansey, Adam would've gone off, asking Gansey to back off and not treat him like a charity case. Ronan would never do anything for Adam out of pity. What he does is always out of something intense and complicated stemming straight out of the core of his chest. Maybe Adam sees it. Maybe Adam is waiting for Ronan to do something just like he is. But then again, there's no denying that Ronan's glaringly obvious. At least to Adam. The clever, observant boy.

When they reach the block, the one with the church and Adam's apartment, Ronan still doesn't know if he's supposed to walk up the stairs or walk back to the warehouse. 

When Adam begins to walk upstairs without looking back, Ronan knows what he's supposed to do.

It's eerie how even the thump of Adam's feet against the stairs sounds muted. He's always exerting himself to contain his existence all the time, it's like he's forgotten how to let go. Or maybe he really is a ghost. (Or a dream.)

When they reach Adam's floor, Adam lets out a surprised sound. Halfway between a  _ huh  _ and a  _ Jesus crap.  _ Ronan tries not to think of the Church below. Not like it matters, when Adam himself is a place Ronan worships. 

It's easy to detect the inducer of surprise when chainsaw lands on his shoulder. Adam almost loses his balance and falls off but since he's Adam, he clings to the  _ almost,  _ to the negligible semblance of control and manages to not fall. Ronan was ready though. To catch him if he did. 

" _ Kerah."  _ Chainsaw croaked snappily, or happily depending on the way you heard it.

"What are you doing here?" Ronan asks her, feeling Adam observe them. Now that Adam's mentioned the feeling it's hard to feel past it. The feeling of someone looking at you. The feeling of Adam looking at  _ him.  _

Chainsaw says  _ krek krek  _ like that explains everything. Maybe it does. She flies over to sit on Adam's shoulder and hits him with his beak. Or kisses him, depending on the way you saw it.

" _ Atom."  _ She croaks, definitely happily this time, not dependent on the way you saw or heard it.

Chainsaw has built a vocabulary that's impressive for a raven but not quite for one that's dreamt.  _ Atom  _ is definitely her name for Adam, fitly so, because atom is that infinitesimally small bit of matter that forms the basis of creation and reality. Adam Parrish in his boy shaped existence, deconstructs the very basis of creation and reality that Ronan tries so hard to understand. Irony, Ronan thinks, always finds its way in the most mundane of things.

Adam smiles as Chainsaw keeps assaulting his cheeks and it's genuine this time. The stretch of his mouth curved in a genuine display of happiness.

Ronan's face doesn't give it away because most of the time, emotions don't make their way to his face. But if the anomalous stretch and curve of the cardiac muscle in his chest is anything to go by, he sure is affected. But Adam doesn't have to know. But he's scared Adam already knows because he turns to look at Ronan, his smile smaller but just as effervescent, a knowing look in his eyes.

Ronan remembers to look away but he doesn't want to. So he matches the knowing look in Adam's eyes with his own inexpressive stare.

Adam is the first to break off their little odd timed, unsolicited staring competition and pull out the key to his apartment. The key chain, a dreamt thing, fashions a miniature orb that swirls with colors indicating the distance between the lock and the key. Currently a brilliant green flows inside of it. The color of a forest. ( _ The color of the forest's favourite.  _ The color of home.)

The inside of Adam's apartment is small and bland. Sort of like Adam himself; how he tries to contain his existence and make himself invisible. Like Declan but not quite. Declan tries to hide in plain sight. Adam tries to hide  _ from plain _ sight. Declan is bland because he chooses to be. Adam isn't bland but he tries to be. He doesn't succeed, obviously.

The walls are cream coated. Not painted. They are chipped at certain places. The wall that's adjacent to the couch where Adam's seated most of the time has a particularly large portion of torn plaster. Adam gets antsy sometimes and scrapes his nails against it. Ronan hasn't commented upon it.

Chainsaw flies back to Ronan's shoulder as Adam unslings his bag. Her weight is a comforting presence, not that Ronan would ever let the psychopomp get hold of the knowledge. 

Adam's phone rings and he presses it against his hearing ear.

"Yeah, he's with me." 

"I don't know."

"Fine."

"Gansey for the love of God's shitting capacity." 

"Maybe." Adam says this with the smallest of smiles on his face. Imperceptible unless you're Ronan Lynch and stare at Adam Parrish all the time when he's around. He also turns to look at Ronan and of course Adam would test his Catholic devotion as they literally stood above a literal Church. Adam can curse using God's name all he wants. Worshipping isn't an exclusive act after all. Definitely not limited to just God.

Adam says an  _ okay  _ before hanging up. 

"Gansey said you weren't picking up Declan's phone so he called him and then you weren't picking up Gansey's phone so he called me." 

"Cool." 

"Call Declan." Adam tells him before he walks inside the bathroom.

Ronan pulls out DBAG LYNCH from his contacts and hits call. 

"What?" Ronan says as soon as the call connects. 

_ "You're supposed to come back to the barns tomorrow and oversee everything. Don't forget." _

"I remembered. That didn't warrant three missed calls."

" _ I have rightful reasons to not trust you to turn up when you have to. Anyways I don't have time for this. Be there on time."  _ Declan hangs up before Ronan can reply. 

When Niall Lynch's body was found, laying on the ground with blood oozing out of it, eyes open in that horrid way of dead bodies, Ronan hadn't known how to react. Hadn't remembered to. 

When Aurora had become lifeless, Ronan hadn't known what to think, what to do.

The dream dies with the dreamer. Ronan Lynch, son of a dream and a dreamer. An orphan with the death of the dreamer because the dream dies with the dreamer.

When Aurora had become lifeless, Ronan hadn't known what to think but he thought. Of Matthew. Of what that would mean for him. Ronan tried to stop thinking.

All this while Ronan's been trying to clear his head. He's been trying to stop thinking, to keep the reigns of his neurons at bay but it's like running in circles.

Declan's always telling him that he doesn't even try.

Maybe he's right.

When Adam walks out, hair looking wet from the steam that's probably condensed into it, he only looks at Ronan once to know something is off. Emotions don't make their way to Ronan's face but Adam always knows. 

He's dressed out of his sweater into another faded T-shirt. This one's light blue. Maybe it was brighter earlier but it's hard to tell. His pyjama bottoms have small trees patterned on them and the combination should look hideous. It should give Gansey's aquamarine polo shirt and khaki shorts a run for ridiculous combos of unwearable clothing but it doesn't. It should look hideous but it doesn't.

Ronan isn't even trying at this point.

"Hey, you okay?" Adam asks, eyebrows knit in concern, voice tinged with a quality that reminds Ronan of drifting leaves. 

Ronan doesn't say anything. Just stares at Adam, face impassive. Ronan's always talking without talking and Adam's always understanding without listening. It drives Ronan up a wall.

Adam takes his place on the couch, where his nails have scraped the plaster and given an external existence to the unrest within him. He pats the seat next to him meaningfully. Chainsaw is hovering overhead in uncertain circles, sort of like Ronan in his attempt to escape his mind, almost like she can pick up on the distress he feels. Maybe she can.

Ronan sits next to Adam as close as he can without any part of them touching. It's stupid really, because when Adam turns to face him, his knees knock directly into Ronan's thighs. Ronan ignores the burn.

"What's wrong." Adam says instead of asking. Earlier when Adam had asked Ronan if he'd wanted to talk there was room for avoidance. Now, it's either talking or disappointing Adam. Not really a choice at all.

"Just stuff." He answers, honest.

"Ronan." It's conveniently unfortunate how Adam only says his name when he's exasperated. 

"I can't stop thinking about what happens to Matthew if anything happens to me." He didn't want to say it out loud and give the words a physical existence of their own. It felt like if he never said it out loud or acknowledged it, it'd cease being real. It's sad that that's not how reality works. Sad that reality is just a concept for Ronan Lynch. Sad that Matthew is a by product of his dreaming.

It's almost imperceptible, the stronger press of Adam's knees agaisnt his thighs. It's fucking imaginary, the shape and feel of Adam's palms on his face but it's not. It's real, because Adam's hands are rough and worn out like the rest of him, like all of him. Adam's hands are large; like they could scoop up all of Ronan and cup him safely in their hold. Adam's hands are on Ronan's face.

Ronan doesn't like being dramatic. 

Ronan forgets to breathe.

Or he remembers but doesn't want to. He's so scared that any microscopic movement on his part will cause Adam to withdraw his hands. But the cells in his cheeks where Adam's fingertips rest against them are already combusting and regenerating at an unfathomable rate. A cellular reaction that's singularly induced by Adam's touch. 

It's not real.

"You're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to feel, Lynch. It's like sometimes you forget you're human. Or the logistics of being a human." Adam whispers and Ronan distractedly notices that they're close. Too close. Closer than they've ever been.

"You would know." His voice sounds steady and although it's weird speaking around the weight of Adam's still present hands on his face, although it probably looks weird or funny, he doesn't want the hands gone.

"That's why I'm saying it." Adam removes both hands from either of Ronan's cheeks but lets his knuckle trace over the side of his face. Ronan closes his eyes when his knuckle grazes just beneath his eyes.

"You amaze me, Adam." His voice sounds steady although it's weird speaking around the weight of his heart in his throat. 

"That'll be two firsts." 

Ronan looks questioningly.

"First one to be amazed by me and first time you call me Adam." He specifies, looking at Ronan intently when he opens his eyes again. 

"I'm sure I've called you Adam before."

"You having my fucking contact saved as _ Parrish  _ period." 

"Had."

"What?" 

"I  _ had _ saved your contact as  _ Parrish _ with a period." Ronan specifies, curling his fingers in a fist when they get too loose and involuntary in their urge to touch Adam.

"What's it now?" Adam asks and it's so unlike him. So unlike the indifferent, nonchalant facade he's always trying to pull himself under.

Ronan tosses his phone in reply.

"Oh." Adam says like it's some giant revelation. His mouth rounded, lashes fluttering dramatically. 

Ronan would spiral into thinking about the specifics of gravity but before he can begin, he feels Adam draw in closer. Their faces are aligned perfectly; eyes to eyes, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. All it'd take was leaning in and-

Adam leans in first because of course he does. The 

only reason Ronan hadn't leaned in all this while was because the only way to be sure if Adam Parrish wanted something was to have Adam Parrish ask for it himself.

The shape of Adam's mouth against his is definitely the best thing he's ever felt.

Kissing Adam Parrish feels like dreaming of clouds.

When Ronan gets a little rougher and deepens the kiss, a resounding thump scares the shit out of the two of them. His first immediate thought is  _ fucking chainsaw.  _ But she's perched on the other edge of the couch, observing the two of them with a dreamlike stillness. 

It's his phone, on the ground. The reason for the disruption. The reason why they were even kissing in the first place. The screen is still showing Adam's contact. It says  _ FOREST'S FAVOURITE _ .

When cabeswater had begun to preen at Adam's presence, Ronan found himself understanding. Chainsaw loved Adam. More than she loved Gansey, Noah or Blue. Less than she loved Ronan 

obviously but then again, maybe the love wasn't comparable. Ronan had created her, he was like a parent. Loving Adam was drilled into Ronan's subconscious and thus drilled into all that his subconscious brought to life.

Cabeswater seemed to love Adam and well, Ronan knew why. 

"Every time I'm stressed these days, I find myself walking around in Cabeswater. It's like we're calmed by each others presence." Adam tells him, earnest and soft. He's still too close.

"Strange." 

"Fuck you, Ronan Lynch." Adam tells him, before kissing him again. 

Ronan has had dreams less strange than this. 

♧

"The first time I caught you staring, I thought you hated me." Adam tells him, later when they're both laying on the couch in Adam's preferred seat by the chipped wall.

Later, months later, the the giant sized chip on the wall will still be the size that it is now, because beginning from now until the unspecified later, Ronan's always going to take Adam's hand in his when forest boy gets antsy.

Right now, Ronan hums at Adam's confession. 

"When did you know?" He asks, instead of discussing the passive aggressiveness of his stare.

"Right after. When you looked away immediately." 

"Oh."

"It was hard to believe. That you could have a crush on anyone at all really. That you'd have it on me." Adam runs his fingers absently through the rubber bands on Ronan's wrist. The last part of it is whispered, soft and light, drifting through the air between them.

Ronan really doesn't want to delve into the specifics of it. Of seeing Adam for the first time while driving with Gansey in his ugly ass orange Camaro, the boy with the faded uniform, his shoulders caved in to draw less attention but his head held high with a defiant expression nonetheless. Of seeing Adam and just knowing it wasn't the last time he ever saw him. (Because he'd make sure of it. That it wouldn't be the last time.)

"You made me wait. Made my life a miserable pile of pining goo." Is what Ronan says instead.

Adam laughs and climbs on top of Ronan. Ronan's certain he's going to dream of the sound, playing in the world he creates as a sign of life. 

Adam kisses him on the mouth, briefly, and says sorry. 

Ronan doesn't think he has it in him to even try.

  
  
  


♧

**Author's Note:**

> ronan u r grossly in love for this


End file.
